


In a New York Minute

by Wanderer



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-06
Updated: 2012-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-03 03:10:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderer/pseuds/Wanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's fall in New York, and Reese's thoughts turn to the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a New York Minute

In a New York Minute

 

When he’s not working the numbers for Finch, John spends a lot of time just walking around New York. He feels an affinity for the place. His fate, if there is such a thing, seems entwined with the city’s. If its twin towers hadn’t fallen, after all, he’d never have gone in so deep. Hell, he’d never have gone into the CIA at all. He’d’ve quit, stayed with Jessica like he planned, he –

He shoves the thought away. Soldiers have no use for regrets.

Yet memories of Jessica, once touched on, are never easy to escape. He walks faster.

He walks for hours that day, through a chill autumn afternoon. The sun is bright, but the trees have already lost most of their leaves. More of them fall as he walks, swirling around his long dark coat in fragile red and yellow eddies. If he needed more evidence that winter’s coming, there’s the fact that he can feel it in his bones. Literally. Sometimes the ones he’s broken more than once ache when it turns cold now. He can feel them today as he moves. Another man might resent those tiny aches as hints of his own mortality. Reese, having long ago accepted his, is just thankful to still be alive, minor aches notwithstanding.

He owes that to Finch. He knows it’s a debt he can never repay, no matter how many of the numbers he works, or how many of them he manages to save or take down. But he’s used to owing debts. The one he’d felt he owed to his country is what started him down this road in the first place.

He owes others he can never repay to Jessica. Though he’s done with trying to drink himself to death to atone for hers, in other ways, he’ll never be over it. Though he’d never admit it to anyone, least of all Finch, he’s lonely. It’s been a long time since anyone’s touched him who cared about him – longer than he cares to remember. And he knows from experience that paying someone for sex only dulls the body’s hunger for a little while. It won’t change the size of the hole that a life of battles, secrecy and forced isolation has carved inside of him. So strangers are out, but given his trust issues and the work he’s doing, it’s highly unlikely he’ll ever meet a woman who he can lower his walls enough to be intimate with, either. Especially after what happened with Jessica. 

Being with Finch helps keep his loneliness at bay. The numbers help too, but they don’t come along every day. Time off gives Reese the chance to brood, and he knows better than to fall back into that trap. He won’t be able to work the numbers efficiently if he starts drinking again.

So he walks, and watches as the human tides in Manhattan ebb and flow seemingly endlessly around him. He tries to feel a part of them, without much success. He moves silently among them, his thoughts turned inward, his gaze sharp as ever, observing everything around him despite his introspection. 

He thinks of Finch, of his fussy, almost prissy habits, his apparent prickliness, and how it hides a good heart. Well, Finch believes it’s hidden, anyway, though John quickly came to recognize it. After all, the man’s devoted his whole life (and Reese’s, now) to rescuing others, without hope of recognition or recompense. Expecting, in fact, that they’ll both end up dead for their efforts. That alone argues for generosity and compassion on a scale John has seldom encountered before; and never in the CIA. But Finch seems to want to believe his motives are mysterious, and keeps Reese at a careful distance with his formality. At least he tries to. 

Reese grins a little, thinking of that. He’s never had such a polite boss before. It’s all, “Good morning, Mr. Reese. How are you, Mr. Reese,” with Finch, like they’re two old maiden aunts or something. There’s something almost Victorian about Harold. His obsessive neatness, his precise diction and old-fashioned formality make him seem like he was born in the wrong century. It’s probably why he started teasing Finch, and investigating him. Finch’s brilliance, coupled with his little eccentricities make him interesting, and an irresistible target for Reese’s sense of humor. If Finch had been more casual with Reese, he doubts he’d’ve tried to tease him, or gotten so interested in his reclusive boss. But the teasing’s become a habit now, like the cat-and-mouse game they’re playing about Finch’s background and secrets. John relishes both far too much to give them up. 

He watches the sun gradually decline, and the changes in the light as it wanes. The subtle ways the shadows change in response, sliding over the sleek sides of the skyscrapers like water, growing larger and darker as day slowly retreats. Thrust and parry.

Dark and light…

“Painting is all about that, you know,” Jessie says again in John’s memory, while she dabs a brush delicately in water, then in paint. “Light. Well, light and darkness really. How they play over everything, give everything form and definition.”

“That’s what it’s all about, hmm?” He kisses her shoulder lightly, fondly, studying the painting taking shape in front of her. A butterfly in shades of brown, orange and bright blue, against a field of green whose regularity is interrupted, in interesting places, by small lavender flowers. Butterflies and flowers, John thinks, a little bemused, a bit horrified at himself. Jesus. If anyone had ever asked him before, he’d’ve laughed and said he had zero interest. Less than zero. And God help him if any of his Army buddies ever find out that he likes to watch Jessie paint things like this. He’ll be in deep shit. But her painting interests him, as everything about her does.

To his surprise, he’s learned that there’s something strangely calming about watching her paint. She gets so absorbed in creating something beautiful, making it bloom on paper or canvas, that sometimes he knows she forgets he’s even in the same room with her while she does it. He doesn’t even mind. It feels good to him somehow, to be with someone who’s passionate about making beautiful things. He’s spent so much time soldiering, shooting guns, blowing things up and killing people, sometimes he half forgets that there are – that there can be – times like this. Serene, sunlit moments when the rest of the world goes away, and it feels like only he and Jessica exist. Moments when he can savor all the flavors of her beauty. The outward kind that everyone can see, her soft blonde hair, her curves that his hands have learned so well. And the other, private sides of her that are not so visible, at least not to a stranger’s eyes, though they shine clearly to Reese: her softness, her sweetness, her strength, her laughter. The beauty that pours out of her through her brushes and onto paper and canvas. The love that shines out through her brown eyes, her hands and her smile, into him.

He’s in awe of Jessie’s artistic talent. It’s something he can never do, could never hope to do, even if he wanted to. Fortunately for him, he’s never had the desire to be an artist. His hands are made for other things: harder, bloodier, more violent things.

Still, he loves these quiet moments with her fiercely, like he’s loved nothing else in his life. They’re almost like making love. No, they are that. Even when they’re not speaking or touching, they’re still doing that with their eyes. Jessica is everything to him, the only thing he’s ever found in life that he’s loved more than being a soldier.

He’d thought so at least; until the twin towers fell. He’d wanted, needed so badly to make a difference then. He’d given it everything he had, done things that sickened him, only to be betrayed. 

He should’ve chosen Jessica instead. Funny, how your worst mistakes are only clear in hindsight.

Reese shakes his head, trying to banish the past. Though it’s been several years, his memories of her are still so painful that he has to swallow and blink hard as he walks.

Jessica was right, though -- it’s all about darkness and light. His whole life’s been about that. 

This thing with Finch is, too. Dark and light. Sunshine and shadows. Good and evil.

He’ll never leave Finch now. He knows that. Finch is everything to him – boss, handler, comrade in arms, brother, family. They’re together now, to the end. Whatever and wherever that will be.

He thinks Finch will be surprised at how soon it happens, at least for John.

John won’t be surprised. He’ll just be sorry to leave Finch alone again, with the burden of all the numbers. But he knows he’ll have to, probably sooner rather than later. Though he’s deadly and capable, he’s still only human, and the odds were stacked against him even living this long. His luck won’t hold out forever.

Wait for me. Please.

He said the words too late. Too late for Jessica to hear them, too late to save either one of them. The numbers, and his early death, will be his penance for that. If there is such a thing.

If he were at all religious, he’d pray that might be enough to somehow earn him a reunion with Jessica after he dies. Since he isn’t, he can only hope that if there is some kind of life after death, wherever Jessica is now, she may still love him, and be waiting for him. 

He knows it’s highly doubtful. Most days, he thinks it’s impossible. Yet somewhere deep inside him, far below the surface of his thoughts, those words are always sounding inside him. Wait for me. Please. It won’t be long now…

Reese walks on as twilight comes. Cameras look coldly down on him, tracking his every move, watching as night finally falls and he blends into the darkness of the city.

**Author's Note:**

> The story's title is from Don Henley's song by that name.


End file.
